Chapter 2: Stable Vows Broken
The scent of rain was coming. Feyre could smell it on the wind that whistled through the high, arched windows of the palace corridor, a damp promise that did little to cleanse the restlessness clinging to her. She’d been looking for Tarquin for nearly an hour. A discussion about coastal defenses had been scheduled, and the Summer Court lord was never late.
It was the muffled, rhythmic thump from the direction of the old stables that finally drew her. Not the sound of hammering. Something softer, wetter. Accompanied by a low, masculine grunt she knew in her bones.
Her steps slowed on the flagstones. The stable doors were ajar, spilling a rectangle of murky lantern light onto the cobbled yard. Another sound joined the first—a sharp, ragged cry, distinctly female. A curse, gritted out between gasps. "Fuck! Harder, you bastard."
Feyre’s blood went cold. She knew that voice, that particular blade-edge of fury and desire.
She moved silently to the doorway, Tarquin forgotten. What she saw inside halted the very air in her lungs.
Tarquin was there, alright. He stood frozen just inside the threshold, his bronzed skin pale, his mouth agape. His eyes were wide with a kind of horrified fascination, fixed on the scene in the nearest open stall.
Nesta was bent over a bale of hay, her bare back a long, elegant curve of muscle and moonlight. Her hands were fisted in the rough hemp, knuckles white. She was completely naked from the waist down, her dress shoved up around her waist, the fabric trembling with each brutal impact.
Behind her, driving into her with the relentless, piston-like force of a storm surge, was Rhys. His own trousers were open, shoved down just enough to free his hips. His wings were a vast, shadowy canopy, half-spread for balance. One powerful hand was splayed on the centre of Nesta’s back, pinning her down. The other gripped her hip, his long, dark claws piercing the skin there. Four thin trails of blood welled and dripped, gleaming in the low light.
His face was a mask of feral concentration, his violet eyes nearly black. Every thrust was a full-body snap, the slap of skin on skin echoing off the high beams. “Is this what you wanted?” he growled, his voice rough with strain. “This raw, disgusting grind? You wanted me to be an animal, Nesta? Here I am.”
Nesta threw her head back, her sweat-damped hair sticking to her neck. “Don’t you fucking talk,” she panted, the words shredded. “Just move.”
He obliged. He changed his angle, tilting her hips up, and hammered into her with a deeper, more devastating rhythm. Nesta’s cry this time was pure, shattered pleasure. “There! Right there, you son of a whore!”
In the adjacent stall, a massive black stallion snorted and pawed the ground, its ears flicking nervously. The scent in the air—sweat, sex, blood—was agitating it. The animal’s flanks quivered.
Feyre couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. The visceral reality of it was a physical blow. The raw, unfiltered carnality. The violence of Rhys’s grip, the willing abrasion of Nesta’s acceptance. This wasn’t the graceful, powerful lovemaking she knew from Rhys. This was something else entirely. A battle fought on a different plane.
Rhys’s pace became erratic, frantic. His breaths were ragged gusts. “You’re going to take it,” he snarled, his hand sliding from her back to tangle in her hair, yanking her head back further. “Every last drop. You come on my cock, Nesta. Now.”
A broken sob escaped her, then a guttural scream as her body bowed taut. She clenched around him, her back arching violently. The sight of her pleasure, so fiercely won, seemed to undo Rhys completely. With a final, deep plunge that made Nesta wail, he stilled, his own release racking through him. His wings shuddered. A low, possessive groan rumbled from his chest.
For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of their harsh breathing and the stallion’s uneasy stamping.
Slowly, Rhys pulled out. He released Nesta’s hair, his claws retracting from her hip. She collapsed forward onto the hay, her body spent, trembling. Rhys straightened, his movements lethally graceful even as he fastened his trousers. He turned his head, and his eyes—glazed, satisfied, dangerously aware—found Feyre’s in the shadows of the doorway.
He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look ashamed. He looked… challenged.
Nesta pushed herself up on shaking arms. She didn’t bother to cover herself. She turned her head, following Rhys’s gaze, and saw Feyre. Saw Tarquin. Her silver eyes, usually so cold, were bright with a feverish, post-coastal glow. A slow, brutal smile touched her swollen lips.
Rhys reached down, his thumb swiping through the blood on her hip. He brought it to his mouth, tasting it. “You look good with my blood on you,” he said to Nesta, his voice a dark caress.
Then he looked directly at Feyre. “Did you need something?”
The casualness of it. The utter lack of remorse. It shattered Feyre’s paralysis. A torrent of emotions—betrayal, disgust, a confusing stab of jealousy—flooded her. She couldn’t speak. She just stared at her husband, at her sister, in the lanter’s guttering light.
Tarquin finally found his voice, smooth and carefully neutral, though his face was still tense. “My apologies. We were… interrupted.”
Nesta let out a low, hoarse laugh. She pulled her dress down, wincing slightly as the fabric touched the claw marks. “Don’t apologize on my account,” she said, her gaze locking with Feyre’s. There was a dare in it. A blatant, defiant line drawn in the hay-strewn dirt.
Rhys stepped out of the stall, adjusting the cuff of his jacket as if he’d just concluded a business meeting. “The coastal reports are in my study,” he said to Tarquin, as if nothing had happened. As if the air didn’t reek of sex and defiance. “Shall we?”
He walked past Feyre without another glance. Tarquin, after a last, uneasy look at Nesta, followed.
Leaving Feyre alone in the stable doorway with her sister. The space between them felt vast, charged with things unsaid, with a new and terrible understanding.
Nesta stood, her movements stiff but composed. She didn’t look at Feyre as she walked to a water trough and splashed her face. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Finally, Nesta spoke to her reflection in the dark water. “Don’t,” she said, her voice flat. “Don’t say a single fucking word.”
Feyre found her voice. It was a whisper. “Why?”
Nesta turned. The defiance was still there, but beneath it, Feyre saw something raw. Something shattered and re-forged into a sharper, more dangerous shape. “Because you wouldn’t understand,” Nesta said quietly. “You never do.”
She walked past Feyre and out into the approaching storm, leaving her sister standing in the lantern light, the image of Rhys moving over her, in her, burned into Feyre’s mind like a brand.